Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Perhaps the Ma administration
should spend a few NT dollars re-educating its officials on Democracy and Human
Rights 101

By a chilly Dec.
10 day, the skies over Taipei covered in a thick pall of particulates from
China, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) once again waxed philosophical about the benefits of peace
and human rights in a speech held to coincide with international human rights
day. Outside in the real world, his administration would once again remind us
that action, not mere rhetoric, will ensure that everybody’s human rights are
respected.

Where to begin...? Just as Ma was
delivering his speech, a 37-year-old Vietnamese woman who had married to a Taiwanese in Keelung was seeing her Republic
of China (ROC) citizenship revoked after it was revealed that she had had an
extramarital affair. Citing Article 19 of the Nationality Act, the Ministry of
the Interior determined that her actions constituted a failure to demonstrate her “good character.” (Working in a hostess
bar and engaging in criminal activity are other types of misbehavior that can
lead to the cancellation of a naturalized citizen’s citizenship in Taiwan.)
Under the current law, which legislators have been dragging their feet trying
to revise, foreigners who obtain ROC citizenship must demonstrate their “good
morals” over the subsequent five years, or risk seeing their citizenship
revoked.

Of course,
Taiwan’s race-based concept of citizenship means that the requirements for
“good morals” do not apply to ROC citizens. After all, the philandering —
pardon, “good morals” — of Lee Hong-yuan (李鴻源), the man who heads the very ministry that is threatening
to strip the woman of her citizenship, is very well known to the public.

As she had
forsaken her Vietnamese citizenship, the woman, who arrived in Taiwan eight years ago, now finds herself stateless. As
do her two young daughters.

But more clouds
hung over Taiwan on that fateful day. Later in the afternoon, a small group of individuals from the
Black Island Youth Alliance, along with academics, activists and friends,
gathered in front of the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office to show their
support for Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) and Wei Yang (魏揚).
The pair had recently been indicted for violations to the (antiquated) Assembly and Parade Act during
a July 31 protest against the controversial cross-strait services trade
agreement outside the Legislative Yuan, a protest organized after members of
the organization were barred from attending public hearings for the agreement.

Wei being
hospitalized following a motorcycle accident in late November — which he blamed
on fatigue after following ARATS Chairman Chen Deming (陳德銘) around — his mother, Yang Cui (楊翠),
filled in for him.

A mother speaks out

In a brief
speech prior to going into the prosecutors’ office, Yang, a professor at National Dong Hwa University in Hualien, pointed
out the irony of serving as emcee for President Ma during human rights day just
last year (her grandfather, a famous writer, was a victim of 228 and the white
terror). One year later, here she was, standing in the cold outside the
prosecutors’ office, defending her son’s actions.

Besides her,
legal experts and activists held placards detailing how Article 29 of the
Assembly and Parade Act (“where an assembly or a parade is not dispersed after
an order to disperse by the competent authority is given, and is still in
progress in disobedience of an order to stop, the chief violator shall be
subject to imprisonment for a term of not more than two years”) violated the
two U.N. covenants signed by Taiwan, a fact that the Ma administration has
itself acknowledged but refuses to amend or strike out altogether.

Ma having
requested that all hearings about the services trade agreement be completed by
the end of this year, we should expect more “violations” to the Law over the
coming weeks as activists continue to pressure the government. Need more irony? Criminals like
Chang An-le (張安樂) walk freely, but student activists like
Lin and Wei (and many others) are indicted and must fight in the courts…

As if this
wasn’t enough, an official from the Water Resources Agency sent out to meet
protesters in the morning who were calling on the WRA to prevent a foreign wind turbine firm (InfraVest) from continuing construction along coastal areas in Miaoli County showed
nothing but contempt for people’s right to protest and to assemble. After
grabbing the microphone (this from the account of someone who was present at
the scene) the official all but said that the demonstrators were able to hold
their protest because the government had allowed it. As if protests were not a democratic
right, but government charity. Perhaps the Ma administration should spend
a few NT dollars re-educating its officials on Democracy and Human Rights 101.

Human rights are
everyday matters, not just vague concepts and words thrown about by state
leaders on human rights day. While Taiwan’s human rights situation is far, far
better than in many other places within the region, there is reason to worry.
There are ample signs of regression, and if nobody does anything about it, it will get worse. (Photos by the author)